News To Me

My new best friends over at SolQu shorts recently posted about what makes a short story plot. You can read the whole article here. In said article they deconstruct my short, "Cake or Pie or Timmy." Here's an excerpt:

In his recent short story ‘Cake or Pie or Timmy’, Stephen Schwegler follows all 5 short story rules.

• He has two central characters that are cats, with other minor characters in the cat Timmy and the Doberman dog plus the unseen characters of the humans the cats live with.
• His setting is the apartment and neighbourhood that the cats live within.
• The plot is kept simple; the cats are off to raid a neighbours for pie. Will they succeed?
• The central conflict is two-fold. Will they be able to overcome the dog and get the pie plus should they divert their attentions and go save Timmy from the well instead?
• Which leaves use with the central theme to the story – should self-interest overrule doing the right thing and helping those less fortunate than ourselves, even if it means we have to give up or lose out on the thing we really really want?

So as we can see, structuring a short story doesn’t have to be overly complex or massively diverse. It can be keep simple yet remain hugely effective (we do love cake or Pie or Timmy here at Solqu Shorts!)

 Needless to say, I'm more than pleased with this result and can't thank them enough for their kind words.